Scott Morrison with his brother-in-law, Gary Warren, as he announces the listing of multiple sclerosis drug Mavenclad on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP

When the Australian Paralympian Carol Cooke is on Mavenclad, she almost forgets that she has multiple sclerosis.

The cyclist and rower says that going on the medication has made “all the difference in the world” and changed her life.

Now, thousands of Australians who, like Cooke, are affected by the most common form of the disease could save about $54,000 a year thanks to the drug’s listing on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

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With the PBS listing, sufferers of relapsing-remitting MS will pay just $40.30 a script or $6.50 if they are concessional patients.

“This is Christmas a few days early for those who live with MS ... it’s a gift from the Australian people, but it’s a gift that is absolutely deserved,” the prime minister, Scott Morrison, told reporters on Sunday.

The plight of MS patients is close to Morrison’s heart as his brother-in-law, Gary Warren, has a different form of the autoimmune disease.

While there is no cure for MS, the federal government says the drug listing means patients will face fewer relapses, less disease activity in the brain and less progression of disability.

Carol Langsford, the chair of the Trish Multiple Sclerosis Research Foundation, said she believed her daughter, Trish, could still be alive if the drug was available in time.

Her daughter, a keen athlete, was 30 when she died in 2002 after spending four-and-a-half years in a nursing home.

“I’m absolutely thrilled that Mavenclad has been made available because anything that gives people with MS a choice makes an enormous difference to those lives,” Langsford told reporters. “If only it’d been available for our daughter.”

The prime minister’s brother-in-law, who has progressive MS, joined him at an afternoon tea celebrating the announcement at Kirribilli House on Sunday.

“I don’t know a better bloke than this one,” Morrison said of Warren.

“The courage and determination that he’s shown over the course of his life since first diagnosed about 20 years ago has just been tremendous.”

Warren said that while the PBS listing would not make a difference for him, the benefit for those with relapsing remitting MS was “outstanding”.